What does middle class mean to you?

Bags Wise and succinct, as ever.

Having heard your, and your sister's, lovely Salford accents Greatnan, it was like listening to my favourite auntie who grew up a mile away fom you! A tinge of difference from my South Manchester accent, but discernible amongst so many variations around these parts

For me, there's only one thing that defines middle class: valuing ideas, the ability to think critically, education of any kind – all that kind of thing – above material possessions and fuss about trivia. Why? Because it's in the realms of ideas and what ideas 'produce', both in ethics and in the material world, that have 'made' the middle classes.

I probably haven't expressed that very well, but I know what I mean.

How can you ask whether class matters when we have a government full of ex-public schoolboys in the UK?

To be judged so....

That's what I like about you, Greatnan...

You can say that again, Greatnan.

Not me - but it is very amusing! I have never lost my Salford accent and I found it funny when people tried to patronise me. I don't patronise easily!

Class! Who cares anyway?

Kittylester Bloody Jilly Cooper made a very silly remark in that book about posh girls not washing their hands after using the loo – unless of course, she was embarking on subtle class warfare using E. coli as her main weapon.

And Jilly Cooper's 'Class'

The book looks like fun and it also looks like it's quite gently taking the p out of the upper middle class – rather like The Sloane Ranger Handbook of the 1980s.

Well we are supposed to be classless here in Oz, but it ain't necessarily so. Accent doesn't really count, but area of abode is of the utmost importance, and how we eat our food and educate our kids.

Food
Middle class - home cooked meal around the table.
Working class - sometimes home cooked, often nuked freezer food in front of the telly.

Abode
Middle class - Huge brick monstrosity in a leafy suburb, or a classical colonial style home in a posh suburb, or a posh inner city flat.
Working class - flat, small house, or commission (council) house in a dodgy suburb with industry nearby.

Education
Middle class - private school then university
Working class - state school then apprenticeship OR university (because everyone who qualifies can afford to go: we have Austudy, similar to a student grant, and deferred fees repayable in the form of extra tax, if and when they earn enough)

We are a mixture of middle and working class - well, most people are: the borders are blurred. In fact in our family, one son sounds very posh and teaches at a private school, the other son sounds very Australian and has left the white collar job he got after getting his BSc, and has taken on an apprenticeship to be an electrician.

We ( DH and I) are tertiary educated, broad Yorkshire speaking lefties in a commission (council) house, who listen to classical music and eat home cooked food at the table. Gawd knows what that makes us.

Hyacinth Bucket is my mother!!

Who decides these things anyway? Can we decide for ourselves or is it just how others perceive us?

My daughter was teased for being 'posh' because one of her friends came round and spotted our big dining table. They totally missed the fact that we were a family of seven so needed a big dining table. We mostly eat in the kitchen!!

Thankfully, the book itself seems to be taking the mickey out of all this. does anyone still take it seriously?

I don't think it has anything to do with large houses etc. My family is solidly middle class and none of us live in grand houses. That is money not class, a working class man who has done really well, won a lottery etc can buy himself a huge house with a pool,send his kids to boarding school take exotic holidays and so forth. He is still working class because of his background and those of his ancestors. David Cameron is middle class whereas the aforementioned John Prescott is working class - even though both were in government.
The working class are the artisans like carpenters,plumbers, brickies etc. They can be aspirational and even quite well off. The middleclass are the professionals like doctors,lawyers, accountants. Both can veer between the two types of work but accents,background and family will always determine who is whom.
It is a very British thing this aspect of class, hopefully in time it will die out, in the grand scheme of things we are all equal.

annodomini The reason that Keeping Up Appearances is so funny is that, like all best Brit sit-coms, it is just the slightest exaggeration of reality. Candlelit suppers and a riparian picnic are pure joy.

Nfk, so Hyacinth Bucket really exists!

Absent, what am I? I watch the tele in the front room.

I was once invited to join a 'ladies' group. I was told it was for "people like us". Reluctantly went to my first meeting where they had a talk from a professor on 2 up, 2 down terrace housing (outside loo and a coal shed), their development and the lives of the people who lived in them. Lots of oohs and aahs and incredulity. On leaving there were lots of derogatory remarks about the old banger parked outside.
Guess where I was brought up and who's car it was (husband had gone to work on his bike)
Never went again. I know my place! (And they were all stuck up half sixers anyway)

What? Are not they all absent ??

By the way, my original question was a feeble attempt at being funny.

Class is still a huge issue in the UK and has little if anything to do with money. The middle class does still fall into three categories, lower middle class, middle middle class and upper middle class. Lots of Nancy Mitford's strictures do still apply, however silly they seem. For example, saying "pardon", "toilet" and "lounge" is still lower middle class; "sorry", "loo" and "sitting/living room" is middle middle class; "what?", "lavatory" and "drawing room" are upper middle class. Net curtains are as much an indication of class as owning a holiday villa in the Marche. In the sketch, Ronnie Barker plays an aspirational lower middle class man. I am not sure whether the John Cleese figure is truly upper class or just upper middle class.

In spite of John Major's declaration that class divisions no longer existed, they do still persist and are still pernicious. Social mobility has steadily decreased over the last three decades; we are all expected not just to know our place but to stay there these days.

My mum aspired to be middleclass so married the public school educated son of an oil company director. Unfortunately, my father was resolutely classless and wouldn't mention his background at all.

What actually defines class today?

Me!
And it wasn't easy, dragging myself up by the bootstraps!